How I tricked my brain to like doing hard things

so for the majority of my life I struggled to go to the gym consistently even though the gym has always been a part of my life to some degree I grew up playing hockey and all my brothers played hockey and went to the gym so going to the gym was always the right thing to do but I can never stay consistent even into university sometimes I would go two weeks straight at the gym and then take a month off I try to get into a groove and hype myself up and I really wanted to look

like Thor and then I lost my hair the whole point of this story is to let you know that if you relate to this I've been in that exact same place but I've managed in recent years to develop a tremendous consistency at the gym and it takes me a lot less effort to get there than it previously ever has and I can credit this a lot to a particular mindset I've adopted when it comes to doing things that I find difficult or boring and sort of tricking my brain into liking these things I've also been

able to apply this strategy to other areas of my life most specifically to reading books and editing videos essentially what I did is I stopped generating motivation by thinking about an end goal and instead I learned to enjoy the process so first of all what's wrong with visualizing an end goal why not use this image of this Beachbody or Greek God physique as motivation to workout well the main problem you'll face is the fact that there is a huge disparity between what it feels like to fantasize about this Greek god physique and what it feels

like to actually be at the gym pushing heavy weights they're a completely different sensation fantasizing about having an awesome body feels awesome it puts you in this sort of lala land where you're just walking around as this imaginary version of yourself actually going to the gym it's strenuous it's sweaty and it's often really boring especially if you're doing cardio on a treadmill it's like the most boring thing I've ever encountered in my life that's the first problem the second problem that you face when you try to generate your motivation from this ideal image of yourself

is that it will always be a moving target no matter how much you fantasize about this perfect version of yourself you will never feel like you have arrived and even if you were to hypothetically arrive at this goal there's something called entropy stagnation breeds destruction if you just sit on your winnings everything will fall apart you need to keep moving you have to love the daily discipline of going to battle every single day and finding pleasure and fulfillment in the thing in the present moment for its own sake if you're able to do this then

that's the happy place the thing itself will generate its own motivation as you do it and you can become fully immersed in the activity you're doing so am i saying it's bad to have goals in general not at all goals are really good for creating direction having an ideal is sort of like having a compass it's leading you in the right direction you should take a glance at it for reference but in the day to day struggle of actually doing the thing it's not what you should be focusing on so now that we know why

it's kind of unhelpful to always think about this end goal now you're probably thinking how do I learn to enjoy and embrace difficult things and have it be an integrated part of my life so there are two things that really help me do that number one is more of a mindset shift in it's more inner work and number two is more of a practical strategic thing that you do to yourself okay so number one is to operate from an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset when you think to yourself I need to go get

jacked do you think that's an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset that is a scarcity mindset because you need to go get something and that applies that you don't already have it when you say I need to go to the gym because I need to go get jacked you're subconsciously saying to yourself that's because I'm not jacked yet which also implies to yourself that you're not jacked and as I've mentioned in previous videos human beings have any mate sense of wanting to stay intellectually consistent whatever you think your identity is you will operate accordingly so

if you are constantly telling yourself that you are not jacked what do not jack people do they don't go to the gym when you look at it that way going to the gym will always be something that's outside of yourself it's something that's unnatural for you why would you go to the gym if you're not jacked so am i saying you should do some like woowoo thing and pretend that you're jacked all of a sudden like force yourself to know that you are in fact a giant beast that's not what I'm saying because that's not

true instead try reminding yourself that the reason why you want to go to the gym is because you're an active person and going to the gym is something that is important to you your health is important to you so since you're an active person going to the gym is just something you do that gets rid of a ton of mental resistance in the way of actually going to the gym you can use this exact same method for reading books if you're constantly telling yourself like oh I have to go read books to get smarter oh

I have to go read a book now like obviously you're not gonna have a good time while you're doing it but if you identify as somebody who enjoys reading books it's something that you like doing it's just a part of who you are then you're way more likely to actually follow through with doing it and if you think this is just some woowoo crap this is how some of the greatest musicians athletes and performers operate take John Mayer for example I was just watching one of his Instagram live videos where he was jamming out to

Blues back tracks and he was having the time of his life and he said on the actual live stream nothing's more fun in this lifetime going out to dinner and coming home and picking up guitar and just practicing just playing I don't even call practice because even the word practice implies that you're only doing it to achieve some sort of outcome but if you're playing you're just enjoying it for what it is so when I'm playing free I'm like and I'm kind of doing what I do at home which is repeat the same stuff over

and over again because it feels really good this next tip is a little bit more practical and a little less theoretical and that is to utilize habit bunching and that is when you pair an already existing habit that you are used to doing with one that you're trying to work on so for instance I'm a sucker for a great cup of coffee I have one in the morning and one in the early afternoon I really enjoy the taste of coffee and I look forward to it every single time do I have an addiction yes but

I can leverage this filthy habit of mine into working on another habit a great one to pair with a coffee addiction is reading and that's exactly how I started reading more books every single morning next to my coffee maker I placed the book that I wanted to read next to it so that when I made my coffee I knew to pick up the book and I could only drink the coffee if I was reading the book the entire time I was drinking it done and the thing about this is eventually you just start getting used

to reading whether you have coffee or not the action of opening up a book and reading becomes a lot more natural it'll become something very pleasant to you that's so much better than reading for the end goal of becoming smarter like what is getting smarter even feel like it doesn't feel like anything it's not like in the matrix where they download kung-fu onto neo all of a sudden you just feel it habit bunching also works really well when you're trying to develop a gym habit if you have an album that you are currently in the

habit of listening to and you crave the sound of posts Malone's beautiful sweet silky melodies then you should leverage that allow yourself to listen to posts Malone but only when you're at the gym this is one of the main ways I started to become consistent at the gym I had this migos album that would like pump me up so much even though I'm looking back on it now it's like not even good music at all and just like drinking coffee and reading once you start using habit bunching to develop a positive association with the habit

you're trying to work on then your entire mindset towards that thing shifts pretty soon you will just like going to the gym because of the way it makes you feel and realize that it's less about the music that's actually making you feel so good and it's more about the endorphins of pushing heavy weight and getting stronger so to summarize stop generating your motivation on a day to day basis by fantasizing about some sort of end goal that you're never going to arrive at instead use the appropriate mindset shifts and the habit bunching tool and whatever

other tools at your disposal you have to help you love the process and help you love doing these things for their own sake huge shout out to Skillshare for sponsoring this video for those of you who don't know Skillshare is an online learning platform with thousands of classes covering dozens of topics everything from photography to productivity to learning how the stock market works which is actually the exact topic that I've sunk my teeth into recently on Skillshare as I build my business and start making more money I know that it's only a matter of time

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